Video. Let’s keep Doliprane in France! Sanofi employees are mobilizing

Published on October 18, 2024

The pharmaceutical giant announced last week that it was negotiating with the American investment fund CD&R in order to potentially sell it 50% of Opella, its subsidiary which houses around a hundred brands of non-prescription products including Doliprane.
This strategic project, a new example of the refocusing of “Big Pharma” on innovation, quickly took a political turn given the popularity of this drug.
The unions fear a social breakdown in the 1,700 jobs that Opella has on French soil, including 480 on its site in Compiègne (Oise) and 250 in its factory in Lisieux (Calvados), dedicated to the best-selling drug in France.
“We are sacrificing Doliprane and French health sovereignty on the altar of finance,” laments Humberto de Sousa, CFDT coordinator of the group, present in Compiègne, where around a hundred employees gathered in front of the site.
The strikers also held a picket in front of the Lisieux factory at the same time. Allan Bertu, general secretary of the departmental union of the CGT Calvados goes even further: “It will be necessary, in any case the CGT, it will raise the question of the nationalization of the site to guarantee the economic sovereignty of this country.”
Present in Compiègne, the NFP deputy François Ruffin showed his support for the strikers and tackled the President of the Republic: “What the employees are defending today is not their particular interest, it is the general interest and it is the best interest of the nation. (…) I come to remind the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, of the promise he kept almost three years ago now.”
Eliane Michelon-Payet with AFP